Hello, Ghost World

At the beginning of the 2024, I set an intention to share more of my thoughts with the world. Unfortunately, I decided to compromise my commitment to open source (where possible), to go where everyone else seemed to be. That was right before some of the flaws of the for-profit sites were thrown into sharp relief. I paused my sharing to consider what path to take. I still have ideas I want to share. And if I’m going to take this leap of faith, I might as well be true to my values, so here I am. I’ll be writing more about why I believe in open source, and what good regulation of algorithms and tech business models looks like (along with a lot more topics in economics, of course), but I wanted to start here with something about me and my motivations. (What follows was originally published on January 6, 2024.)

One morning in February 2021, I sat down by the Merced River in Yosemite Valley and decided it was time to quit my job. The sky was blue, the sun was warm on my face, and I could feel the cold air biting at my nose when I inhaled. As I exhaled, I could hear birds chirping over the rush of water. It felt like waking up after a long, tangled dream of being chased. 

At the time, I was the Chief Economist at the California Department of Finance. Part of the job description was to be “the state’s recognized economic expert” and the Covid-19 pandemic that started in March 2020 meant there was a lot to cover. The normal patterns of the economy were completely disrupted as everyone rethought their daily routines to try and protect themselves. From international trade to hugging our families to what we spent our mental energy on, everything changed. 

What I realized on that February day was that we have forgotten how to recognize each other’s humanity. We’ve all bought into the idea that we can pursue our self-interest and the magic of market competition will make us all better off. We’ve all bought into the idea that government is the problem, or at best a necessary evil to be minimized where possible. Employers tell themselves that they’re doing the right thing by maximizing profits, and that it’s not their fault that what they pay isn’t enough to live on. Workers take whatever they can get to keep themselves afloat, and gamble that things will improve. But even before the pandemic, at a time of record-low unemployment rates in California, 1 in 5 households spent at least 50 percent of their income on housing costs. If they were a two-income household, they were one job loss away from homelessness. Those housing costs leave almost nothing for transportation, food, or other necessities, let alone child care or student debt. But it’s part of our worldview that we need to keep going even when it’s not a fair fight, so we harden our hearts and wall ourselves off from human connection to survive. 

This retreat into defensiveness and suspicion of government is especially perverse since our economy relies on trust. Markets only exist because we trust impersonal transactions. Wealth only exists because we trust that the claims we hold will be paid in the future. And yet, trust relies on collective action to have rules that are fair for everyone.

Government is how we collectively choose those rules. In a modern economy that grows the pie by encouraging people to come up with new ideas, we need a capable, democratic government that can keep our interactions fair. Working for fairness is why I became an economist and have been a public servant my whole career. I’ve seen what bad government can do in other countries. It’s not good, and it’s really hard to fix. I just thought that despite the political posturing, it wouldn’t happen in the US.

On January 6, 2021, in an attempt to keep himself in power, the losing presidential candidate incited a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. It didn’t work, but the next time it might. And we haven’t changed any of the conditions that led that candidate feel like he could incite violence with impunity. We haven’t changed any of the conditions that allow companies to make money off keeping people angry and isolated. We haven’t changed any of the conditions that caused people to feel hopeless and feeling like blowing it all up. These are our neighbors and fellow Americans that we allowed to become so desperate that installing a king-like figure seemed like a good idea. That is our fault because we’re not being honest with ourselves.

We are failing our neighbors by buying into the idea that if we profit from something we’re entitled to do it. We are failing our fellow Americans by buying into the idea that we can’t have a better government. We are failing our fellow humans by buying into the idea that might makes right rather than we’re all better off when we all do well. We are killing the Earth by buying into the idea that it’s not worth the economic cost to limit ourselves to benefit future generations. We’re hurting ourselves.

The hopeful part is that these are self-imposed problems, and so we can change our behavior and fix them. That requires us to understand what is going on, understand what the options are, and understand what the tradeoffs are. When we have this information, we can choose an economy that recognizes each other’s humanity. I became an economist because I want to help everyone have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and our opportunities are shaped by how we choose to interact in our economy. I’ve worked for years to understand how the economy works at the local, state, national, and international levels, and that’s what I’ll be covering here. 

In my weekly essays, I’ll be writing about how I see the economy working in all its facets: internal beliefs, interpersonal actions, and how all this aggregates up into economic statistics. I’ll be sharing why taxes are far more interesting than you think, why we should care about the nuts and bolts of intellectual property law, and where we can invest a little today to prevent big crises in the future. By showing you how I think and why, I hope it will be easier to see the systemic economic patterns we took for granted. I might be missing something, though, and I hope you’ll let me know when this is the case. This is how we learn together so we can choose to act together. I’m excited to be on this journey with you.